Watermark
by desolate butterfly
Summary: [ItaNeji crackfic] Neji broke the rules only once. He didn't expect it to lead to an encounter with the deadly genius nin, Uchiha Itachi.


**Author:** desolate butterfly  
**Title:** Watermark  
**Pairing:** slight ItaNeji, it's cracktastic!  
**Warnings:** Itachi is a psychotic, disturbing, murderous (possibly pedophilic) bastard in this fic. And chibi Neji is cute, cute, cute and so deliciously innocent that I just want to corrupt the hell out of him. coughs  
**Summary: ** Neji only broke the rules once. He never imagined it would lead to an encounter with genuis nin Uchiha Itachi.

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He wasn't supposed to be there.

The river flowed sluggishly beneath Neji's bare feet as he skimmed them over the surface of the water, liking the way the droplets clung to his toes, the way they caught the sunlight and sparkled there, like the jeweled rings that his nursemaid had sometimes made him wear around festival times, only not so hard and irritating and _girly_.

Neji already had long hair that he was forbidden to cut. He didn't need anymore gender ambiguity in the form of strange jewelry.

He wasn't supposed to be there and that's what made it so fun, so thrilling, and just a touch dangerous, because there _would_ be a punishment for disobeying. His nursemaid would tell his cousin, who would tell his uncle as soon as they realized that he hadn't shown up for morning kanji lessons with Hashida-san.

Not that the punishment would be for skipping a kanji lesson, or wasting Hashida-san's time, or anything like that. No, Neji would be punished for leaving the compound _without the express permission of a main branch Hyuuga elder._

Neji didn't quite know what this punishment would be, but he suspected that at the very least he would not be allowed outside the Hyuuga compound again for a while, which meant that he would have to make this one illicit excursion count.

He'd chosen the riverbank rather then the forest because it was soothing. The water swirled lazily around rocks and fallen tree branches and Neji swirled his feet lazily around with it, lifting them up high every so often so he could plunk them back into the stream and make that special sploosh sound he enjoyed so much.

The sun rising rapidly above him was making it just hot enough that the coolness of the river was a relief to his pale skin. Briefly, Neji wondered if he was getting sunburnt.

He'd probably be scolded extra in that case. The nursemaid always seemed to be very anxious about the quality of his skin; bathing it and perfuming it and remarking on its smooth paleness.

Neji hated his skin. He thought it made him look too much like a girl. He wondered what it would be like to have freckles like the ones on the back of Rikuru-kun's neck.

The boy sat in front of him at the Academy and always smelled like miso.

Neji didn't mind. He thought it was much better then smelling like chrysanthemums and lilies and all the other stuff his shampoo was supposed to smell like. Whatever it was, Neji was pretty sure he always smelled like girl.

A bird chirped off to Neji's left and he automatically activated his Byakugan to search for it. He found it, hopping onto a twig and nipping at the river water a little over ten meters away, but that wasn't all he found.

Ten meters away, a body was lying face down in the river, its head being pushed into the soft silt and mud of the riverbank by two strong hands. Neji could see the open, staring eyes of the drowning man, the way his fingernails split and tore as he scrabbled at the hands holding him down.

Neji could also see the person holding the drowning man down, a dark shape against a red, rising sun, standing very still, very calmly until the other man's struggles slowed and stopped. Neji knew of this man, a prodigy who had made Chunin at ten, and Jounin at thirteen. A man his uncle Hiashi spoke of with the utmost respect. A man with eyes that could freeze you in your bones and hands that could drive ten kunai into your heart in an instant, or so the rumors went. The genius Uchiha Itachi…

Neji stopped breathing for a moment as the scene etched permanently into his mind. The noise of the river seemed to fade away until everything was silent and still.

Then the Uchiha paused in studying the work his hands had created and raised his head. His eyes…his eyes were _red_. Like he was bleeding inside his head and all the blood had no where to go except out into his cornea and pupils, streaking down his cheeks like scars.

Suddenly, those blood-red eyes snapped up and connected with Neji's which was _impossible_, wasn't it, because Itachi was so far away but coming closer and closer and Neji made some gasping noise as he toppled, suddenly dizzy, into the river.

Water dragged at his yukata, and the current didn't seem so sluggish now that he was caught in it. Neji scrabbled at the bottom of the riverbed in order to gain some purchase, but only ended up scraping his palm on the sharp end of a rock.

Instinctively, his mouth opened to release a cry of pain, but water flowed in before he could make a sound, choking him.

'_I'm going to die,'_ he thought, wildly. _'Just like the drowned man.'_

Neji hung, suspended in the water for a few seconds, before the back of his yukata was firmly grasped and he was dragged, sputtering and coughing, to the side of the riverbank. Neji clung to the warm and waxy blades of grass that he had been sitting on so pleasantly only minutes before, and tried to get his breath back.

He kept his eyes clenched shut until he felt like he could open them without getting dizzy again. The first thing he saw was a pair of normal, dark eyes staring at him in something that looked like bemusement.

Inwardly Neji seethed. He hated to be laughed at. Outwardly he remembered the manners that his nursemaid had drilled into him and bowed his head as much as he could while lying prone on the ground.

"T-Thank you. You rescued me," Neji said.

Nervous, his eyes strayed to the right river bend, where he knew that just a short distance away, a body lay bloated and heavy in the water. _'Don't think about it.'_

Uchiha Itachi merely stared at him in response, watching as Neji slowly got to his feet and then fiddled with the tie of his obi, which had come loose while he struggled in the water. He winced as his bleeding palm reminded him of his encounter with the rock on the bottom of the river.

Neji pressed the finger of his other hand to his skin, trying to stop the crimson fluid from dripping down and ruining his yukata anymore then the waterlogging had already allowed. If he came back to the Hyuuga compound bleeding and soaked there would be hell to pay.

Calloused fingers pulled his own small hand away from the wound, and Neji's eyes widened as Itachi cradled his palm between his hands and slowly brought them to his lips.

For a second time, Neji felt a certain dizziness and the buzzing in his ears only grew louder as the dark-eyed man pressed his mouth to Neji's wound and lapped at the blood there in three slow swipes of his tongue. Only the grounding sting of Itachi's saliva against the open cut kept Neji from falling over in an ungainly heap. As it was, he had to lock his knees to keep upright.

After what seemed hours, Itachi released Neji's hand, which had stopped bleeding, gave him a curious look, then stood and turned to leave. Neji barely had time to consider what had just happened before the sound of Itachi's fading footsteps snapped him out of his trance.

"Wait!" he shouted. "…aren't you afraid I'll tell?"

Itachi paused for a few seconds, as though considering Neji's question. But he did not turn around, and eventually he started to walk again until he was soon out of even the Byakugan's range of sight.

When Neji returned to the Hyuuga compound that afternoon he had gotten the scolding of his life. His nursemaid had _tsked_ over the scrape on his palm, which his uncle Hiashi had forbidden her to treat, and complained even more about the state of his yukata. Neji was confined to his rooms for three days.

Later that evening, news of Uchiha Shisui's suicide had reached the entire village, and Neji was glad that he didn't have to interact with the rest of the clan and hear their speculations on the incident. He was glad that two days later, when the Uchiha massacre was over, that Itachi was gone and fled and that he never had to look into those blood-red eyes again.

Neji didn't know why he never told anyone what he saw that day or why his dreams were suddenly so troubled and his left palm burned long after his cut had healed.

Fin.

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End file.
